Pedagogical Approaches to Studying Literature to Enhance EFL Learners’ Language Proficiency

As literary courses in the curricula of the departments of Foreign Languages and Literature or English have been greatly dwindled, this presentation aims to examine the use of literature in a college EFL classroom in Taiwan to enhance students’ language proficiency and cultural awareness. It will discuss the major reasons why literature is neglected and explain the benefits of studying literature, to explain the pedagogy and activities used to comprehend the selected literary texts, and demonstrate how a four-skilled integrated approach (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) to learning literature can enhance EFL learners’ language performance. It is hoped that college students will be benefitted by studying literature.

The Effects of Strategic Planning on Oral Tasks of Taiwanese College Learners

This study aims to explore ways of enhancing EFL students’ oral skills using task-based language teaching (TBLT) through telling short stories in a classroom environment in Taichung, Taiwan. For this study, 54 students were enrolled in an EFL course titled “English Oral Communication” and “English for leisure and culture” from the Fall semester of 2022 to the Spring semester 2023. All the participants were required to tell a short story according to a set of pictures that the teacher-researcher gave them. To do so, the researcher randomly but not evenly assigned the participants into two different teaching methods. One teaching method, the planning group, allowed students to prepare their short story for 10 minutes. The second teaching method, the no planning group, required students to tell their short story immediately without prior preparation.

Generating In-Depth Understanding of Classroom Motivation via Exploratory Practice

This study illustrates how Exploratory Practice (EP) prompts teachers and learners to collaborate in gaining mutual understandings about the quality of life in the language classrooms. Participant observations and learner interviews were conducted in two undergraduate English courses in Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology. Learner reflective dairies, post-class learner reflective writings and teaching journals were also gathered in an attempt to understand how motivation is co-constructed by teachers and learners in class. Results of the study reveal that EP plays a crucial role in the circulation of a positive classroom motivation cycle through ongoing teacher-pupil communication and teacher reflection. EP urges effective communication in the classroom and this consequently fills the gap of the motivation cycle and prevents misunderstandings between teachers and learners. Research findings suggest that the adoption of EP can be beneficial to teacher motivation as well as learner motivation through participants' understandings about classroom life.